Taste

I'm eating a herring. It's healthy, I'm told. Most of all, I find it delicious. I only have to close my eyes and the taste takes me back to that warm summer day at the beach. That fish tasted so good that you could daydream about it...

Taste is memory, a complex interplay of factors. It is also changeable. For example, I always loved French cheese. The softer the structure and the sharper the taste, the better. Until a few years ago something changed. It suddenly made me sick. Now all those cheeses taste like soap. 

It is not known exactly how many people suffer from loss of smell and taste due to corona. Estimates range from 30-90%. Tasting nothing is depressing for many people. It actually has only one advantage (for people who want to lose weight): all the urge to snack and eat sweets also disappears. 

Corona mercilessly presses us on all kinds of facts. Like how important our health is. An essential key to a healthy body is a healthy diet. What is healthy or not? Unfortunately, there is no simple answer to that. Just like taste, it varies from person to person. We do know what is unhealthy. And that the temptation of those products is often so great. That is why Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, Utrecht and Ede want laws and regulations to be adjusted to be able to limit the supply of unhealthy food and thus tackle obesity. Intervention is necessary, they say, because half of the Dutch population is overweight. 

There are also numerous proposals in the election programs of the political parties to adjust the current system of food production and consumption to be healthier and more sustainable. What does that mean for the sector, from farm to fork? The economic importance of the agrifood sector for the Netherlands is considerable: would you like to know how the political parties view (the future of) our food, what they have to say about employment and what the plans are to maintain and strengthen our (international) competitive position? Then follow the Food Election Debate on 23 February. No, not nice and close together in a room of course. It has to be online, via a live stream. It's no different, but how I miss the ordinary closeness of other people. Physical contact, an embrace, a kiss. 

Judith Witte
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